


let me know (do i still got time to grow?)

by commonemergency



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Depression, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-17 17:19:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16100222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commonemergency/pseuds/commonemergency
Summary: Dan can fend it off for a while, but at the end of the day it was still there, existing in him, and he wouldn’t lie and say that he didn’t sometimes feed into it. Because once you’re in it for so long it almost feels like it’s just a part of you that you have to let exist.or Dan is lost in London and Phil finds him.





	let me know (do i still got time to grow?)

**Author's Note:**

> as always, thank you to [@Kay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kay_okay/pseuds/kay_okay/works) for always listening. <3

Dan’s not sure where he is right now. _Muswell Hill?_ He’s stopped paying attention a couple stops ago, his legs are on the bar in front of him with his head rested against the cool of the window. It’s sometime between 9:30-10:00pm the last time he checked the clock. He’s turned his phone on airplane mode, he doesn’t want to talk to people right now, it’s too much energy that he doesn’t have. It’s not that people are exactly _looking_ for him anyway. He knows that’s the negative part of his brain talking, the same part of his brain that’s telling him to run away. 

He can only can listen to that for so long, can only go as far as a couple stops from where he normally should. He can never really go far from home, but this is far enough. He does this sometimes. Let’s himself watch the familiar streets and stores that he knows fly by him, thinking back to when it was all a mystery. The familiarity came a couple months in, but this city has been lingering on to his bones for a while now and he’s ready to take the train to go elsewhere. It’s a sick pleasure sometimes, thinking of all the places that he can go by himself and not tell anyone. He’s almost done it before. 

He’s always stopped himself when he thinks of how far he’s digging the knife into Phil’s side. It would hurt him. It would hurt him more than it would hurt Dan. He closes his eyes, fingers digging into his palm and he sighs a little. Another stop. People tap their oyster cards and find an open seat. Dan eyes them before reverting back to the window. London is starting to look less like a city and more like the suburbs. 

“Bloody raining again,” The voice brings him back out of his haze, he’s looking at the umbrellas being shaken out and hoods being pulled down holding onto the rail. Dan gets up, ringing the bell to stop and waits by the door where he steps out. He doesn’t know where he is exactly. A couple stops past Muswell Hill, he sees the overground tube station and that’s an indicator that he’s far off from home. He walks away from it, towards the shops scattered among flats and houses, they’re all closed now. It smells like rain and kebabs. 

He takes his phone out of his pocket, standing underneath a dry space, there’s a convenience store that’s still open, a person next to him smokes a cigarette that reminds him of Christmas and distant uncles and aunts in his living room watching him dance along to a song that he’s heard on Top 40. 

When he takes his phone off airplane mode he has incoming texts and one missed phone call from Phil. He doesn’t look at them yet, he opens his google maps and it can’t exactly pinpoint where he is. He sighs, going inside to grab a 1 liter box of ribena and a bag of crisps. He thanks the guy, barely passing a smile as he stands back out in the rain. 

He reads his texts. 

_Hi where r u?_  
_???_

There’s about an hour break in between messages.

_I just tried to call u and it went straight to voicemail are you ok?_  
_I’m trying not to freakout but i am_  
_Dan?_

Dan opens the juicebox and puts the straw in the hole and starts to walk towards the row of houses down the street away from wandering eyes and listening ears. It’s late enough that people are just getting home from a night out, but Dan feels like he’ll always have to watch what he says outside of his own home. He’s learning that it’s a new way to live. 

Phil answers immediately. 

“Dan?” Phil sounds out of breath, like he’s been running. 

Dan winces slightly. 

“Hi, sorry. I turned my phone off.” Dan can hear the sound of the tube going, and he catches just the last second of its light before it's gone. 

“Where did you go?” Phil’s voice is cautious. 

Their fights are never really fights, they’re more long drawn out conversations. Sometimes Dan walks out halfway into them. Sometimes Dan brushes it off like it doesn’t mean anything. Dan probably won’t ever stop apologising for the way that he handles things, it’s just that it’s beginning to be too much and he doesn’t know where to start to fix it so he can stop it. 

“I’m lost, Phil.” 

Dan can only hear Phil breathe, one second, and then, “Okay, you have google maps—”

“No. I’m _lost_ , Phil.” 

Dan can’t blame Phil for not knowing how to approach him. It had been a weird game of circling around each other, waiting for the other to move, waiting for the other to address what was happening, and how the dynamic changed. Or maybe Dan changed and he didn’t give Phil the chance to catch up. Dan didn’t understand it half the time. It was like he had been sprinting for so long that when he looked back he didn’t see anyone there. It was just him. 

It’s not Phil’s fault that he’s drowning, and it’s not Phil’s fault that he can’t read his mind and understand his thoughts. There were layers to them, layers that Dan didn’t know if he was even capable of taking off because of how far compacted they were, it was suffocating. 

“Where are you?” Phil asks, he can hear shuffling in the background. 

“I’m by an overground, I can send you my location in a second.” Dan says, and his hands are shaking, and he’s cold. 

“Okay. I’ll meet you there.” 

*

Dan has been sitting on a bus bench by the time Phil found him. He’s wearing his glasses and his sweats with his university hoodie. Dan doesn’t how to greet him, so he just nods. Phil reaches out, like he’s wanting to touch him, but he decides against it, drawing his hand back. They’re still out in public, even if it’s deserted. 

Dan didn’t like that. There was a lot of things that Dan didn’t like that had to become normal. It was just another thing on the list. He closes his eyes, thinking about the imaginary list of things that needed or had to change. He shakes his head now, taking a deep breath. 

“Let’s walk?” He says, his voice cracks and Phil nods. 

The silence isn’t the kind that Dan is used to and comfortable with; it’s loud in its own way. 

“Dan,” Phil says and then he pauses, trying to think of what to say next, “I want to help. I don’t know how to help because I—I can’t…. It’s hard, not knowing when you’ll come back when you walk out. I know you come back but….”

_But what if one day you won’t?_

Dan had been living in this pit for so long and Phil was just starting to realise that it was much bigger than what both of them could handle. Dan can fend it off for a while, but at the end of the day it was still there, existing in him, and he wouldn’t lie and say that he didn’t sometimes feed into it. Because once you’re in it for so long it almost feels like it’s just a part of you that you have to let exist. 

He wasn’t ready for a world that seemed ready for him. He had more people watching him and Phil. He had more people asking him questions to things he didn’t even know yet or felt comfortable with. He didn’t know if he made the right decision by dropping out of university. It was like he was mourning the loss of something but he didn’t know _what._

Maybe mourning the loss of privacy that he felt like they once had. Maybe they never did and were just starting to realise it. It was never meant for anyone else, but they had been young. Dan felt like he had to be loud and abrasive because in his head it just diverted what was really going on. 

_When’s the next video?_

Dan didn’t know. He could have a list of ideas, but none of them felt right and he didn’t feel ready. It would always be the problem. He felt like he was going through this block alone and that there was no way out of it. It shouldn’t feel like this but it did. It gave him an unnecessary amount of anxiety to a point where he thought if he could just block it out then it wasn’t there but that only lasted for so long. 

“I’ll come back.” He said with a shrug. _I’ll always come back_. He just felt like that when he got to a point where he needed to leave it was out of trying to save him or anyone else for the fallout. 

“I get that but—”

_But you can’t live like this. You can’t handle this._

“I know.” Dan said, he’s looking down at his juice box, thinking of how ridiculous this must look for such a serious conversation. His thumb presses into the dent he’s made with his fingers from squeezing it. “But you can’t.” They both don’t fill in the rest. 

It’s not a _I can’t handle the relationship anymore_ , it’s just a way to say that _something needs to be changed._

“What if this is all that I am?” Dan says quietly. He’s looking over at Phil now who seems a bit lost for words. 

There were days when Dan thought, in his most vulnerable times, if Phil regretted being with him. It was hard not to think it. Dan had done his best to keep all the things that bothered him at bay and only sometimes would these insecurities and rounds of depression would come out but it was never as bad as it has been lately. Phil didn’t sign up for that, or even know how bad it could be and Dan felt like that maybe, there were just times when he regretted it. Whatever was going on with Dan didn’t just affect him anymore. 

“I don’t think it is.” Phil says, shaking his head. “I’m not…. I’m not equipped to give you the advice that you need, Dan. All I can do is support you,” 

“I’m struggling figuring out who I am. I don’t know who that is yet.” 

Dan didn’t want to overload every single thought that he had on Phil but there was a certain freedom into letting it out into existence. Phil had always been his best friend but he knew that it was scary to talk about, and that it was complicated because Phil didn’t get Dan’s kind of drowning. 

“That’s okay.” Phil says, reaching out to grab his hand. It feels strange, in such a public setting, but it feels right, interlocking their fingers, as Phil’s way of letting him know, in front of strangers that they pass by or people flying past them in buses, that he’s with him. 

Dan brought Phil’s hand up to his face, it was warm and smelt like home. Phil’s finger traced along the tired lines in Dan’s face, under his eyes, before his thumb pressed against his chapped lips. Phil thought of how much he’d give for Dan to just have a solid night’s sleep free of interruptions from the thoughts in his own head. He couldn’t keep all the clouds away, but he can try and give him just a little bit of light in any way that he can. Even if that tiny bit of light came in pieces through the tiny slips of the clouds. 

“I’ll figure out how to get us home.” Phil says after a while, his thumb brushing against his cheek with a small smile.

They stand at a bus stop, sitting down together on the bench while Phil maps their way home. Dan feels the crisps in his pocket and he takes them out and opens them up and eats one crips handing one to Phil. It’s their first laugh of the night and Phil takes the Monster Munch and places it on his finger for him to eat. Dan puts another one on. He leans against Phil now, wanting some kind of close proximity and Phil smiles down at his phone. 

“Okay, we just have to walk a little bit to get to the bus stop.” 

Dan followed Phil’s lead, grabbing his hand again while Phil navigated their way to the bus stop that they needed. When the familiar red double decker bus came rolling up they sat upstairs in the very front, feet up on the bar. Phil leaned against the window this time, their arms touching each other and Dan leaned into him, his thumb close enough to caress Phil’s thumb. 

“By the way,” Phil says, hooking their thumbs together, “I like who you are. I wish you could see you the way that I see you.” 

Maybe, he thinks, one day he will. 

*

When they get home Dan collapses on the bed and Phil follows. They find their way in the darkness to each other. Dan is exhausted from the day, he wants to say something, but the words get lost in his half sleepy thoughts. He wants to tell Phil _thank you for being there, for always being there_ , but instead he just gets closer to him. He’ll be able to do more than just tell him one day, he’ll be able to show him, too. 

“I’m tired,” Dan says into Phil’s shoulder. 

“Me too. Let’s sleep and we’ll figure out the rest tomorrow.” 

Dan’s sure that Phil says something that his mum used to tell him about sleep, but Dan’s already halfway gone. He can hear Phil laugh lightly, pulling up the covers.

**Author's Note:**

> comments/kudos appreciated!
> 
> talk to me on tumblr/twitter: **@nihilismdan.**
> 
> [reblog](http://nihilismdan.tumblr.com/post/178466537263/let-me-know-do-i-still-got-time-to-grow) on tumblr.


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